Kerish began speaking in Eskandelic in a low, level tone that promised violence was an option. The man at the desk tried to reply and Kerish cut him off without raising his voice. Then he gestured and spat out a few more words. The man looked at Willow’s guard and motioned with his hands. Willow sighed as the manacles were removed. The relief from freezing pain was almost enough to ease her battered heart.
Kerish began speaking again, still in that level tone. Willow caught only “Serjian”. The man’s face turned dark red, and he began nodding. Then he got off his stool and bowed low, one of the most servile gestures Willow had ever seen, and she’d seen people grovel before Ascendants. Kerish ignored him. “Come with me,” he said to Willow.
“Wait,” Willow said. Her voice was hoarse and she had to clear her throat to continue. “They took my things—my—” She stopped before mentioning her knives. She didn’t want to remind him about Amberesh at all.
Kerish turned to the man and said something that ended in a question. The man glanced at Willow, shrugged, and said a few words. To Willow’s shock, Kerish grabbed the front of the man’s ugly tunic and shoved him against the wall, shouting. Terrified, the man gabbled something, and Willow’s guard left the room at a run, disappearing through the door they’d entered by.
Kerish released the man with an oath and turned away from Willow, clenching and opening his fist the way he did when he was under extreme stress. Willow felt her leg beginning to shake. Another few minutes, and she was going to collapse. She limped over to one of the benches and sat, not caring how it looked.
“Are you badly wounded?” Kerish said.
Willow shrugged. Speaking was just too difficult.
Kerish turned away again. Willow tried not to care. She focused on planning her next move. Janida wouldn’t kick Felix out just because she wanted Willow punished, but she surely wasn’t going to give him her support anymore. Willow would have to contact Rafferty and see if he could take Felix. It wasn’t as good a disappearing act as she’d intended to pull, but Rafferty could protect him—no, this was all wrong. Damn it, she’d been defending herself! Janida had to see that. She’d show Janida the truth, and then she and Felix would leave the Residence and—
The guard burst into the room, carrying her things. All her things, including her knives, minus a few Eskandelic coins. She accepted them from the guard and stood holding them, dully incapable of figuring out what to do next. Kerish said, “Is that everything?”
She chose not to make a fuss over the missing coin. “Yes.”
Kerish said something that by the tone of it was scathing, then said, “Let’s go,” and held one of the double doors for her. It opened on a stairwell that ascended into a bright Umberan morning, the sun a few inches over the horizon and the sky a cloudless blue that would be sweltering in a few hours.
They were still on the street with all the buildings that looked like piles of cubical blocks, as if anyone might swoop down and rearrange them into nicer shapes. Willow felt she’d never appreciated the sky before now. She stood and stared up at it, watching a couple of seabirds wheel and dance, white against blue, until Kerish said, “Willow.” Then she drew in a deep breath of untainted air and followed him.
One of the Serjian carriages stood waiting at the side of the street. To her fuddled brain, it looked taller than she remembered, the short steps too high off the ground. She half-lifted one foot, wobbled, and put it down again. Her hands were full. She needed her hands to balance. She looked from the things in her hands to the carriage and back again. She couldn’t think what to do next.
“Give me that,” Kerish said, and removed the little pile from her hands. He made no other move to help her, which stabbed at her heart—he was too angry to bear to touch her?—so she took hold of the side of the carriage and managed to crawl into it, collapsing on the pearl-studded satin without caring that she’d probably ruin it. It was soft, and warm from the sun’s rays, and she closed her eyes, pretending everything was all right. She heard a couple of thumps as Kerish dropped her things on the floor of the carriage. He spoke to the driver briefly and the carriage jolted into motion, jostling her shoulder and making her wince.
She opened her eyes, daring to look at him. His lips were set in a tight line, and his eyes looked everywhere but at her. “Are we going to the Residence?” she croaked.
“We’re going to the scholia for healing,” Kerish said.
They both fell silent. Willow struggled to find something to say, but she didn’t want to talk about Amberesh and she really didn’t want Kerish to yell at her. “Is…Felix all right?”
“He’s fine. I didn’t tell him where you were. No sense frightening him.”
More silence. “I guess that makes sense.”
Kerish finally looked at her. “Nothing about this makes sense,” he said.
The carriage turned in at the scholia drive, but instead of following the familiar path to the Devisers’ building, it turned right when they emerged from the hedges onto the lawn and followed the flowering wall around to a smaller, domed round building. Pillars supported a wide verandah that looked as if it would be shady at all hours. Men and women in brightly colored robes sat on benches beneath it, talking quietly or playing some kind of game with blue and white boxes. They looked curiously at the Serjian carriage and openly stared at Willow. She had no idea if they were astonished at her nationality or her battered condition. She must look terrible and probably smelled worse.
Kerish stepped down from the carriage, then to Willow’s surprise offered her his hand to help her descend. His touch was so gentle it brought tears to her eyes, which she blinked fiercely away. She had no desire to let him know how miserable she was. As soon as both her feet were on the ground, he released her, abruptly, and walked toward the building, fast enough that she had trouble following him on her bad leg. The ache in her shoulder had swelled to fill all of her. Why had Janida sent him, of all people? She’d almost rather have been left to rot than endure his anger and scorn.
The door was a single sheet of glass set in an iron frame. Willow had never seen anything like it. Weren’t they afraid of someone breaking it? It was so impractical, and so beautiful. How very Eskandelic.
The door opened not on a hallway or entry chamber, but on a large room, curved in a way that suggested the entire building was one room, bisected by a single straight wall. Light filled the room from large windows near the base of the domed ceiling, making the white walls glow as if lit from within. Light Devices hung from the ceiling on long chains and trembled in the movement of air imperceptible to Willow. Multicolored low sofas scattered throughout the room gave the impression that it was ready to host a party, but it was so still, so silent, it was hard to imagine anyone being willing to speak at more than a whisper. Willow felt suddenly exhausted and eager to lie down on one of those beautiful sofas and just sleep for a thousand years.
An elegant rosewood desk, its front panel carved into an asymmetrical lattice, took up most of the straight wall, and a man and a woman sat behind it. Both wore sleeveless shirts with deep V-necks, as white as the walls, and they both looked so incredibly clean Willow felt embarrassed to be there.
Kerish spoke. The woman replied, looking at Willow, then said something else that sounded apologetic. Kerish glanced at Willow, then shook his head and pointed at her shoulder. The man came around from behind the desk and plucked at the bloodstained shirt, pulling it away from the wound. Willow hissed in pain. The man said something to his companion, then patted Willow on her unwounded shoulder and gestured to her to follow him. Willow looked at Kerish for guidance, but he’d taken a seat on one of the sofas and didn’t even look up. She swallowed, trying to moisten her painfully dry throat, and followed the man through a white-painted door into the next room.
Cascades of gauzy curtains filled the space, reminding Willow of the Review and its little cubicles of fabric. Sunlight from more windows near the ceiling filtered through the curtains, filling the room with a
diffuse, comforting light. The man led Willow through a corridor formed by the curtains, past cloth-bounded spaces occupied by sleeping men and women. More people dressed in the same clothing her guide wore stood near their patients, apparently doing nothing. Willow had never been healed by magic before, never seen it done, and had no idea what it looked like. For all she knew the healers were performing miracles under her ignorant eye.
The man stopped and parted a curtain, indicating that Willow should enter ahead of him. The little room shrouded in white contained nothing but a low cabinet with two doors and a narrow bench. It was curved in a stretched-out S-shape, like a frozen wave, so anyone lying on it would have their head higher than their feet. It was padded lightly, the cushions the same white as the curtains, and Willow thought about her filthy, bloody clothes and hesitated when the man indicated she should lie down. The man gave her a little push and pointed at it, so she sat on the lower end, trying to keep as much of herself from touching it as possible. The man shrugged. Then he took hold of the hem of her shirt and began to pull it up over her head.
Willow squeaked and batted at his hand, then crossed her arms tightly over her breasts and shook her head vigorously. The man said something she guessed translated as “don’t be so stubborn.” She just shook her head harder. The last thing she needed, after her ordeal, was some strange man seeing her naked. The man shrugged again, then pushed aside the curtain and left.
Willow sat there feeling stupid. He probably did this all the time. How did she expect him to care for her injuries if she wouldn’t even let him look at them? Eskandelics were casual about nudity, if the Review was anything to go by. But she was Tremontanan and she had limits.
Eventually the woman from the desk came through the curtain. She said something that sounded like a question, pointing to herself. Willow hesitated only a moment, then tried to pull her ruined shirt off over her head. Sharp agony stabbed through her shoulder, and lights danced before her eyes. She lowered her right arm, breathing heavily and trying not to faint.
The woman laid a gentle hand on her uninjured shoulder and shook her head. She brought the largest pair of scissors Willow had ever seen out of the cupboard. Willow held very still as she cut through the shoulder seam of Willow’s ruined shirt, then cut the other shoulder and down the sleeve so the shirt fell apart around her waist, the front sticking to the gory wound. The woman gently peeled it away while Willow clenched her teeth against the pain, though it wasn’t as bad as before.
The woman then indicated she should take off her trousers, and Willow did so, praying she wouldn’t ask for her to take off her undershorts as well. The little room felt private, the curtains were heavy and thick, but there were no doors with sturdy locks and Willow was conscious of all the other people wandering around the building. Then she felt ashamed. Here these people were helping her and all she could think about was being naked in front of strangers. What mattered more, her modesty or her health?
The woman seemed satisfied with Willow’s state of undress. She indicated with gestures that Willow should lie down on the bench, so Willow lay back with her arms to her sides and tried to relax. It was surprisingly comfortable, and she didn’t feel cold despite her nakedness. Such a difference from seeing Kerish stitched up by that physicker outside Perelton, all those weeks ago.
The woman examined her shoulder with her eyes and her fingers, and it hurt, but not as much as it probably could have. She lifted Willow’s leg and unwrapped the makeshift bandage to examine the wound on her calf. It hurt more than the shoulder. Willow stared at the ceiling, which seemed to shift thanks to the soft movement of the curtains. Eskandelics were fond of domes. Here, the Jauderish, that building where she’d met with the vojentas, all domed. Even the harem’s meeting room in the Residence had a dome. They made all those places seem more spacious. Why didn’t they have more domes in Aurilien? She was halfway to thinking about whether Felix might construct a new building in Aurilien with a domed roof when she drifted peacefully off to sleep.
She woke as slowly as she’d fallen asleep, happily rising up from a deep rest back into a body that felt no pain anywhere. Even the slight tenderness of her sunburned face was gone. She was still mostly naked, but she was alone on her bench and heard no speech anywhere nearby. The silence of the room was unnerving.
She sat up, crossing her arms across her breasts, and looked around. The little cubicle was empty of anyone but herself. Soft light filtered through the curtains, not enough to make them transparent, not enough to cast more than the faintest of shadows. A faint floral scent drifted through the air, almost too faint to be noticeable. She could sense bits of metal nearby, odd shapes of silvery steel she couldn’t identify, plus a few straight, thin objects she thought were skinny knives. Surgical implements? Would healers even have a need for those? More distantly, she sensed a larger knife, someone’s belt knife, possibly Kerish’s, and a curved sword. She hadn’t realized he was armed until now.
The curtains shifted, and the woman appeared. She smiled at Willow and said something in a friendly voice, held up a finger in a “wait there” motion, and left. Willow waited. It wasn’t as if she had any other options. The room was comfortably warm, but there was a draft from somewhere that made her feel a little chilly. And now that she wasn’t in pain anymore, she was conscious of how filthy she was, her hair matted with dried sweat, traces of blood—not as much as she’d expected—on her chest.
She looked down at her shoulder and saw, not a bloody mess, but a coin-sized scar, white and raised against her pale skin. She prodded it; no pain. It was almost miraculous. She twisted her leg around and saw her calf was uninjured—looked as if it had never been injured. Why had it healed cleanly when her shoulder hadn’t? Something to ask the healer, if she’d been capable of speaking Eskandelic. She was too grateful to make an issue of it. Maybe Kerish would know, since he’d received healing here too.
Thinking of Kerish brought the heartache back. Well, the Serjian Principality couldn’t want her dead if it was willing to have someone heal her, right? Which meant they had something else in mind. Like rejecting her and Felix. She breathed in deeply, let out the breath slowly. Clothes, and then she could face Janida. She hoped the healer woman was bringing her clothes.
On that thought, the curtains parted again, and the woman returned with a pile of fabric. It turned out to be a sleeveless tunic like the one the woman wore, only dark yellow instead of white, and a pair of black cotton trousers. Willow dressed quickly while the woman waited, tactfully turning her back. Strange, considering she’d already seen almost all of Willow during the healing, but Willow took it as a kindness, deference to the foreigner’s strange customs.
When Willow was fully dressed, the woman held the curtain for her and led the way back to the front room, where Kerish waited. He was sitting in his accustomed pose, his elbows on his knees and his head bowed, and Willow was struck so hard by longing she had to remind herself to breathe.
He raised his head when they entered, then stood and said something questioning to the woman, who replied with a nod. “Thank you,” he said in Eskandelic, then to Willow, “Let’s go.”
Chapter Fourteen
In the carriage, seated across from her, Kerish said, “I had to use your money to pay. I didn’t bring enough.”
“It’s my healing. I think that’s fair,” Willow said.
Kerish nodded. His mouth was set in that straight, hard line again, and it made Willow’s heart hurt more. “I’m sorry,” she blurted out.
“Sorry for what?”
“For everything. For killing Amberesh. I swear I didn’t mean to, Kerish, but he was trying—I know you’re angry with me—”
Kerish’s eyes widened. “I’m not angry with you.”
“You certainly look like you are.” To her horror, her voice trembled.
In one swift movement, Kerish was beside her. “Willow,” he said. His arms encircled her, and it was so comforting, so familiar, that her eyes burned again
. She clutched the front of his shirt and buried her face against his chest, and felt him stroke her hair.
“You looked so angry,” she murmured.
“Of course I was angry. I was furious. It took them the whole damn day to bother sending word to us that you’d been arrested. Amberesh dead, you gone missing, and when we found out you’d actually told them to tell someone—” His arms tightened around her. “The guard didn’t come until just after breakfast, when we were preparing to send out search parties. He’s lucky Mother was there, because I’m sure he was just a poor grunt who didn’t deserve what I intended to do to him. His boss wasn’t so lucky.”
“Thank you for coming for me.”
“As if anything on earth could have stopped me. Oh, Willow, khaladesi, forgive my slowness.”
Khaladesi. Beloved.
“It’s not your fault,” she murmured. “I killed Amberesh. You should hate me.”
“Never.” He brushed a kiss across her forehead that made her tingle all over. “I know whatever you did was in self-defense. It’s true, he was my fuoreno, but if I had to choose between you, I would pick you every time. If he’d killed you…”
“He nearly did. I was lucky.”
Kerish’s arms tightened on her again, almost painfully, but being held by him was so blissful she didn’t care. She put her arms around his waist and closed her eyes, breathing in the cinnamon and cloves smell of him and trying not to remember the awful cell.
He stroked her hair again, so gently. “After last night—after this morning—I realized you still hold my heart in your hands. I love you. I have never stopped loving you. Just…let me hold you, please, if only for a little while.”
His quiet voice, his gentle hands, brought back everything she’d felt in that long, dark night. “I love you,” she whispered, and felt his hand still against her hair, heard him take in a quick breath. “Kerish, I love you.”
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